The Iowa Senate voted to increase K-12 education funding for the next year by 3%, up from 2.5% in the last session. State Senator Julian Garrett tells KNIA News the increase is approximately $107 million more than last year, state spending comes to $3.8

Billion, total local spending is $2.9 billion. Garrett also said Iowa taxpayers spend $17,068 per student, and among the concerns raised in discussions was the effects of inflation schools are experiencing, which he said heavily factored into the raise in funding.

“We wanted to get this done early so schools know what their funding is going to be like when creating their own budgets. Of course every schools situation is going to be different. This is an amount we think is sustainable. Revenues are a little uncertain with the economy being in the situation that it’s in, and we don’t want to get in a situation where we appropriate money and next January we have to come in and make cuts because we overdid it and revenues didn’t come in as high as expected. We think this is a good figure to work from. I know some of the schools wanted more, but this is a good sustainable figure.”

Garrett also said he expects the Iowa House to pass the bill this week. For more information, tune in to today’s Let’s Talk Indianola.